BOOK CURRENT5 New Day Rising -... ti : "',_' ,I' '. ",. ' \ "'<"1\ ,:,', Dublin burned, British troops and Irish separatists exchanged gunfire and ar- tillery shells, and about two hundred and thirty civilians were killed during Easter week in Ireland in 1916. As Tim Pat Coogan writes in 1916: THE EASTER RISING (Cassell/Sterling), the rebel leader James Connoll injured and confined to the Irish Volunteer headquarters after a few days of bloody fighting, passed the time reading a detective novel. During a rare quiet moment, Connolly dryly remarked, "A book like this, plenty of rest and an in- surrection-all at the same time. This certainly is revolution de luxe." Out in the streets, his militia battled to take the city; fighting with a bravery that has been re- peatedlyelÙogized since. Within a week, the group was forced to surrender, and, like most of the leaders of the rebellion, Connolly himself was executed. Into this turblÙent landscape Jamie O'N eill casts the heroes of his historical novel, AT SWIM. TWO BOYS (Scribner), whose title is a play on the title of Flann O'Brien's landmark Irish comic novel ' t Swim- Two- Birds." This story takes place in the year leading up to the Easter Rising and investigates the complicated weave of alliances in Ireland; the two Dublin boys struggle not only with their political affiliations but with their reli- gious and sexual identities. W. B. Yeats spoke to Ireland's scars of strife, famously noting in "Easter, 1916" that, after the Rising, "All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." A new volume of Yeats's essays, WRITINGS ON IRISH FOLKLORE. LEGEND AND MYTH (Penguin), examines ancient tales of the land-an Ireland bewitched by "sociable fairies," the banshee, and the medieval warrior CuchlÙain. In fables, w Yeats writes, mortals are transformed a::: into "perfect symbols of the sorrow and beauty and of the magnificence and fd " penury 0 reams. S2 -Lauren Porcaro \ '\, " C-SPAN's American Writers II " , I' ' , 'l\ /rV!i , . "\ I , \\.-J " ' /1'" . '- ( / )'l . ' ERNE 'T liEMu...cwAY . Sundays at 3 pm ET March 31 through July 7 ,), . The hves and works of American writers who have influenced the nation s history ", '-- \ -,L f Á \ \ l V l ' - h0 1 \ \ "z...... '\ (: \ . Each week, a two hour program live from a historic location. ----... Premieres March 31 at 3 pm ET Zora Neale Hurston &: Langston Hughes LIVE from Harlem ZORA NEALE. HURSTON A Special Television Series for 2002 3/31 Langston Hughes & Zora Neale Hurston 4/7 H.L, Mencken 4/14 F: Scott Fitzgerald 4/21 Ernest Hemingway 4/28 John Steinbeck 5/5 William Faulkner 5/12 Ayn Rand 5/19 Ernie Pyle /26 Whittaker Char1bers 6/2 Walter Lippr1ann 6/9 Jack Kerouac 6/16 James Baldwin 6/23 Betty Friedan 6/30 Russell Kirk &. William F: Buckley 7/7 DaVld Halberstam &. Neil Sheehan 15 weeks. Live Sundays, 3 pm ET. Reairs Fridays, 8 pm ET. Created by Cable. C-S N (íÖ) Offered as a Public Service. americanwriters.org THE NEW YORKER, APRIL I, 2002 21